Is It Still Monday? When Life Just Keeps Piling It On
There are bad days.
There are bad weeks.
And then there are those stretches of life where you start to wonder if Monday has somehow become a permanent condition.
That was me recently.
It started innocently enough with a sewer line upgrade. Responsible homeowner stuff. Fix the aging sewer line before we're swimming in our own crap.
Very mature.
Very proactive.
Look at us being adults.
That should have been my first warning.
It Started With a Sewer Line
Living in the middle of nowhere has its advantages. It's quiet. It's beautiful. There are no traffic jams.
The downside?
When you need someone with specialized sewer equipment, they apparently have to pack snacks for the drive.
Our guys came from FOUR HOURS away.
They arrived with fancy high-tech equipment, ready to get this thing done.
Except the fancy high-tech equipment didn't work.
For two days.
Eventually they packed everything back up and headed home, planning to return the following week.
Then the job was rescheduled.
And rescheduled again.
Annoying? Sure.
Disaster?
Not yet.
We were just getting started.
Then I Got Pneumonia
Because apparently a sewer problem wasn't enough entertainment.
I got pneumonia.
And not the I'm going to lie on the couch, watch Netflix and drink tea kind of sick.
I was down.
Antibiotics. Prednisone. Coughing. Exhaustion. More medication than I think I've ever taken at one time.
For about a week, my entire wellness routine consisted of:
Take pills.
Cough.
Sleep.
Try to remember whether I'd already taken the pills.
Cough again.
Very inspirational.
And right in the middle of all this, the sewer guys came back.
This time there were FOUR of them.
Apparently our sewer had become a team-building exercise.
They worked late Tuesday and needed to return Wednesday morning to cut a drain hole.
At this point, I was so medicated that my only request was simple:
Please make the water go where water belongs and the poop go away.
I don't think that's asking too much.
Prednisone Amber Has Entered the Chat
Now, my body clearly needed rest.
Prednisone had another idea.
Suddenly I couldn't sleep.
And apparently when I can't sleep, I become deeply concerned about organizational problems nobody else knew existed.
Drawers needed attention.
Closets needed reorganizing.
Cupboards needed rearranging.
Random cords from 2009 suddenly required immediate evaluation.
I'm standing there in the middle of the night with pneumonia, holding a mystery charger and thinking:
Do we still need this?
WHO CARES?
GO TO BED.
But no.
My lungs may have been struggling, but that junk drawer was going to look spectacular.
Physically: questionable.
Organizationally: thriving.
They Cut the Wrong Frickin' Hole
Wednesday comes.
The guys cut the drain hole.
They finish the job.
They pack up.
They drive four hours home.
Finally.
I start catching up on normal household things.
Laundry.
Dishwasher.
Nothing exciting.
A few hours later...
the basement is flooded.
Turns out all that lovely laundry and dishwasher water was going somewhere it definitely wasn't supposed to go.
Why?
They cut the wrong frickin' hole.
I would now like to add “They cut the wrong hole” to the official list of sentences you never want to hear while discussing a sewer system.
And remember where the guys are?
FOUR HOURS AWAY.
So now I'm recovering from pneumonia, running on steroids, and can't do laundry or use the kitchen normally without turning the basement into an indoor water park.
There comes a point during a bad week when you stop being surprised.
If a llama had walked through the front door, I probably would have moved my purse and said:
Sure. Why not?
Surely We're Done Now
The sewer guys returned Friday.
They fixed everything.
The water finally went where water was supposed to go.
Nobody needed to cut anything else.
The weekend arrived.
Nothing happened.
It was glorious.
I rested.
I started feeling better.
I made the dangerous mistake of believing life had returned to normal.
Then Monday arrived.
Of course it was Monday.
I decided it was finally time to clean the basement properly and put the entire sewer saga behind us.
I grabbed the mop.
There was a dead mouse in it.
Not near the mop.
Not beside the mop.
IN. THE. MOP.
At this point, I wasn't even horrified.
I was offended.
Seriously?
We've done pneumonia.
We've done four sewer guys.
We've done the wrong hole.
We've flooded the basement.
And now we're doing a mouse?
I stared at him.
He stared at nothing because, well...
Dead.
And I had questions.
How did you get in there?
How long have you been there?
Of all the places available to you, why did you choose my cleaning equipment for your final resting place?
Some people might have carefully removed the mouse and disinfected the mop.
Those people are better than me.
Mouse and mop were together now.
Their journey would continue as one.
Godspeed.
I bought a new mop.
Then the Phone Rang
Later that night, we got a call.
Our cousin George had passed away.
And suddenly the whole week felt different.
The sewer was frustrating.
Pneumonia sucked.
The flooded basement was a mess.
The mouse was completely ridiculous.
But those were problems we could do something about.
Call someone.
Take medication.
Clean it up.
Buy another mop.
Death isn't like that.
There's nothing to fix.
One phone call can take a day that felt ridiculous five minutes earlier and make the room very quiet.
And maybe that's one of the strangest things about real life.
The funny and heartbreaking parts don't politely wait their turn.
They overlap.
You can laugh hysterically about a mouse in a mop and grieve someone you loved on the same day.
Neither feeling makes the other less real.
Today, I'm Requesting Absolutely Nothing From the Universe
Things are quiet now.
Suspiciously quiet.
And I have learned not to announce that everything is finally okay.
I'm not tempting fate.
I'm not asking the universe for a sign.
Please don't send me a sign.
I don't need abundance.
I don't need a breakthrough.
I don't need a life lesson.
I'd just like nobody to die, nothing to leak, my lungs to continue working and all rodents to remain outside my cleaning equipment.
That's where my standards are right now.
Give me a boring Tuesday.
A completely average, uneventful, nobody-calls-a-contractor Tuesday.
That sounds wonderful.
Maybe Everything Doesn't Need to Teach Us Something
We have this habit of trying to turn every difficult experience into personal growth.
What did this teach me?
How did this make me stronger?
What's the lesson?
I don't know.
Sometimes crap just happens.
I don't need the sewer line to teach me resilience.
I don't need pneumonia to reveal my purpose.
And I definitely don't need to discover the deeper spiritual meaning of a dead mouse in a mop.
The mouse taught me exactly one thing:
Sometimes you just buy a new mop.
That's enough.
Some weeks aren't transformative.
They're exhausting.
You deal with what's in front of you, laugh at whatever is still funny, take the serious stuff seriously and keep going.
And maybe that's real life after all.
Messy.
Funny.
Sad.
Exhausting.
Wonderful.
Completely unpredictable.
Sometimes all before you've finished the laundry.
So if you're currently having your own never-ending Monday, I'm not going to tell you everything happens for a reason.
I'm going to tell you something much more useful:
Handle the next thing.
And when nothing needs handling?
Sit your ass down.
Enjoy the quiet.
And whatever you do...
check your mop.
Hear the full story on Sex’n’Fries, where we're talking pneumonia, prednisone, sewer disasters, the wrong frickin' hole, one extremely unfortunate mouse, loss, laughter and those weeks when life simply refuses to calm down.
Love life. Love lipstick. Order the fries. 🍟
Stay Sexy!
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